Discussion: My Reviewing Crisis

The 2018 Discussion Challenge is hosted by Feed Your Fiction Addiction & It Starts At Midnight

Last month, I had a bit of a crisis. I was writing a review of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, and I suddenly realized that I didn’t want to do this anymore. I didn’t want to write this review. Or any review. It wasn’t the book’s fault—I really liked the book. I just wasn’t having fun writing the review. It felt difficult and pointless.

I thought I’d just burned myself out with reviews because in the 4 years I’ve been book blogging, I’ve written over 400 book reviews. I figured I just needed a break. So, I took three weeks off from writing reviews.

During my break, I realized that I’ve fallen out of love with reviewing. It has become something that I do just because I’ve been doing it for so long. It’s not fun. It’s part of my routine, and I’ve suddenly lost the motivation to continue following the routine.

This is basically my life.

Why did this happen? I think I’ve come up with a few answers.

I’m typing as fast as I can!

I review almost all of the books I read. When I first started blogging, this wasn’t a problem. Back in 2013, I was reading around 70 books a year, and I didn’t feel overwhelmed by reviewing all of them. As I got more involved in the online bookish community, I learned about way too many interesting books. (See? This is all your fault. You’re too good at recommending books.) My TBR list grew like a monster. The number of books I read every year started creeping up and up. Last year, I read 113 books. This year, I’m on-track to read more than that.

I can’t keep up with reviewing every book. I’m always behind and struggling to catch up on writing reviews. My burnout happened because it finally sank through my thick skull that this isn’t sustainable. I either need to read less or review less. At this point, reviewing less sounds more appealing.

Let’s Pay No Attention To the math behind the curtain

The majority of my reviewing crisis is definitely caused by boredom and overwhelm, but looking at the stats on my blog isn’t helping. I know that blogging isn’t about stats and blah, blah, blah, but when the stats are so lopsided, they’re hard to ignore.

Do you guys want a peek behind the blogging curtain? I know you do. You’re a nosy bunch.

On this blog, I do seven different types of posts: reviews, discussions, Top Ten Tuesdays, book hauls, monthly wrap-ups, weekly wrap-ups, and tags. A book review rarely gets more than 100 pageviews. Most of them get between 50 and 80 views. My most-recent review currently has 67 views.

In contrast, every single other type of post gets between 150-400 pageviews per post. It’s rare that a non-review gets fewer than 100 views. It’s the same story with comments. A review post usually gets between 4 and 10 comments. My other posts get 20-60. My most-recent Sunday Post has 288 views and 50 comments.

I completely understand why reviews get less attention. Not every book appeals to every reader; I review lots of obscure stuff; it’s hard to get creative with a review, so they can be boring. I get it. I’m pretty sure that reviews are unloved on every blog. (If reviews are the most popular posts on your blog, YOU ARE A WIZARD AND PLEASE TEACH ME YOUR MAGIC!) Even though I understand the reasons behind the lower review views, it’s still disheartening.

Cue The Crisis

If you’ve seen my reviews before, you know that they’re not small. I like to be thorough and analyze what I read. My reviews are usually between 700 and 1000 words. One review takes me 2+ hours to write, edit, and format. I try to write 2 or 3 reviews a week. That’s a lot of hours spent on reviews!

Since I’m bored with reviews, I feel like I could be doing something better with my time instead of forcing myself to write them. I could put more effort into my non-review posts. I could figure out what Pinterest is and why people care about it. I could relearn Spanish. I could cook something that doesn’t come out of a box in the freezer. I could join a troupe of playful skiing mimes.

Okay. Maybe no mimes. That's just weird.

Basically, I need to reevaluate how I’m spending my time.

Some Possible Solutions

I don’t want to completely stop reviewing. I just want to cut down on the amount of hours I spend writing reviews. Here’s what I’m going to try:

• Mini reviews. Obviously, making the reviews shorter would cut down on the time it takes to write them. I’ll try cutting most of them from 1000 words to 200-300 words. I’ll probably review multiple books in a single blog post.
• Spend my time reviewing books that interest me. It’s actually unsatisfying to review “meh” books. I’d rather save my giant reviews for books that I have strong opinions about. We all like reading glowing reviews or meme-filled rants, right?
• Ditch the reviewing schedule. Right now, I’m posting reviews every Monday and Wednesday. I’ve been doing that for years, but I don’t have to do it. I can change my schedule whenever I want. I’ll probably start posting reviews less often.

Let’s Discuss

Most of the people reading this are bloggers, so:

• Have you ever had a blogging crisis where you felt overwhelmed by the amount of work you were giving yourself?
• How do you handle reviews on your blog or on Goodreads? Do you have a posting schedule?
• How do you decide which books to review?
• Do you prefer reading mini reviews or in-depth long reviews?